The Fourth Step
by our dancing days
Summary: "And though they don't live happily ever after, they do live, after, and they're maybe even happy. And it's better than any other fairytale, because it's them." / A series of unrelated drabbles from those left behind.
1. Daphne Greengrass

**Title: **The Fourth Step

**Characters: **Harry Potter and Daphne Greengrass.

**Notes: **This is going to be a collection of various, unrelated, 500-word AUs where Harry died in the Battle of Hogwarts, and left someone behind. I'll definitely take suggestions, and I sincerely hope you enjoy!

* * *

A ghost, a shadow. A whisper in the night so silent now; no sound of heavy breathing, no rustling of the blankets where he slept on those nights he could get away.

Those nights she lived for.

There's still a steady pace of footsteps going up the stairs, still the noise of someone tripping on the fourth step, because it is slightly raised and he never got the hang of it. Never will now.

Because he is a ghost, a shadow, a whisper, a boy who didn't live.

"Harry," she calls quietly, as not to wake the other occupants of the room who will sleep long through the night now; now that there is no Dark Lord to fear, or worship, or whatever side they chose to fight on in the end.

There is no Dark Lord, and no Harry. Somehow, they see it as a fair trade. She disagrees.

"Don't leave me," she murmurs, so silently she is almost sure that she only thought it. Harry wouldn't hear her either way, but it's a comfort, a small part of her thinks. A very, very small part.

She lies still as the darkness shifts around her, and the green curtains whisper slightly, ghosting over her bed.

The bed dips and a ghostly hand runs across her cheek, trying to be comforting but it feels as though it's freezing her soul.

Frozen lips hover over her cheekbones, kissing them softly, and she whimpers. There's a clatter and she imagines broken, only half-intact glasses falling to the floor.

She raises her hand and comes in contact with messy hair that feels like silk under her fingers.

She ignores the dark, damp wetness gathering on her palm, following gently down her arm, and she strokes his bleeding forehead. It's cold.

"Daphne," she imagines him whispering, the fingers of one hand caught in her own blonde hair and the fingers of the other clutching at her nightshirt. "Save me, Daphne."

Harry looks at her, his green eyes so very wide in death, and Daphne screams. And screams. And screams.

"Daphne! DAPHNE!" Pansy shouts through the heavy green curtains, and Daphne sits up, still screaming. "It was just a _dream, _Daphne!"

"Right," she chokes, her throat dry and her fingers shaking. "Right."

Pansy opens the hangings and leans over her, dark hair falling into her face untidily. Daphne looks up at her with red-rimmed eyes.

"I don't know what you're screaming about anyway," Pansy continues, sitting down on the bed, making it dip. Daphne holds back a sob. "I mean, the Dark Lord is defeated! Sure, us pureblood families aren't held in quite so much esteem, but we get by. It's better than getting put in Azkaban, which would have surely happened if the _"Chosen One" _had lived."

Pansy scoffs and laughs cruelly, and goes back down to the Slytherin common room, jumping over the fourth step.

Daphne finally starts to cry.


	2. Luna Lovegood

**Title: **The Fourth Step

**Characters: **Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood.

**Notes: **So, here is the next instalment of 'The Fourth Step'! I was sincerely considering leaving this as a one-shot, but I hardly - scratch that, never - write Harry in any romantic pairings and I think it's time to allow him a love-life. He is thirty-two, after all. I adored writing this and I adore this pairing, even though I've never written it before. I sincerely hope you enjoy!

* * *

"Luna... are you sure you're okay? We know that... with Harry gone..."

"Oh, he's not gone," Luna says with a small, glowing smile, looking down at the converses that peek out from under her blue and black robes. She wraps her pink poncho around herself tightly. Harry bought it for her as a joke, one Hogsmeade visit. She hasn't taken it off since... "He's still here."

"No... no he's not, Luna," Hermione tells her, half in anger and half in pity. Hermione doesn't know. Hermione hasn't seen Death like Luna has; hasn't come face to face with it and watched as it took her friends, her family, _Harry. _Hermione has seen her hero fall, and that is that.

That is all.

"He is Hermione. You just have to look for him," Luna reassures her, and she walks off down the corridor. She doesn't skip.

"Bonkers, that one," she hears Ron say, but he's lost his humour, and Hermione just sobs.

Luna trundles up to the Ravenclaw dormitory and ignores the pitying looks she gets from the other students. She won't mourn; she promised Harry, after all. And she always keeps her promises.

She looks around the common room, at the books that she never cared to read - fantasy novels are more her style, to the horror of the other members of her house and the amusement of Harry - and sofas she never sat on - she prefers the floor, oddly. Harry always used to join her.

Luna doesn't stop, though, and walks up to her dormitory, skipping lightly over the fourth step with ease - all the dormitories have them. Like the trick stairs on the third staircase of every floor.

Harry always forgot. Luna likes that.

She sits on her bed, and pulls the dark blue hangings around her like a cloak, like her poncho.

Harry liked her oddities, and her eccentricities - loved them, even, if Luna dares to hope. Harry told her to ignore the others; they don't understand. They are so frustratingly _normal, _and Luna should know that that's boring.

Luna has never liked boring. Weird is so much more _interesting._

All these other people; they're so _conservative - _so empty and dull. Harry was never dull. The Boy-Who-Lived was. The Boy-Who-Lived was a child who played hero, who saved the people and lived happily ever after.

Harry was _not _the Boy-Who-Lived, or the hero, or the saviour. He was just Harry, _her Harry, _and he was so much more than those pathetic little people who thought he could save them.

He saved Luna, though; he saved her from heartbreak, and insanity, and the mean Slytherins who cornered her in the library one day. Harry came to her rescue then, as he had always done and promised he would always do, but he was _more than that!_

Luna believes it and she will give her life, if she has to, to guarantee that the world believes it too.

Someone walks downstairs from one of the other dormitories, and trips over the fourth step. Luna smiles a tragic smile, shrugs off her poncho, and starts to cry.


	3. Hermione Granger

**Title: **The Fourth Step

**Characters: **Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.

**Notes: **Funnily enough, I actually have another one-shot series for Harry and male characters, for the Slash/Femmeslash challenge. I _almost _completely forgot about this one, but never fear! It's back, and I sincerely hope you enjoy!

* * *

She _loves_ him.

That is simple enough, isn't it? She has loved him since... well, maybe before the Horcruxes; maybe before the Yule Ball; maybe before she was more than just a little bookworm, when he was a hero who saved her from an evil troll. He is _Prince Harry, _and she isn't a princess - not even close - but Hermione wants her fairytale, just like any other little girl lost in a world of magic.

And is that too much to ask?

Still, though, her prince ran away to fight the dragon, and she is left alone on her little fourth step, waiting for him to come home.

Princess Hermione is left alone in her castle turret, waiting to come down.

"And though they don't live happily ever after, they do live, after, and they're maybe even happy. And it's better than any other fairytale, because it's _them."_

Hermione closes the fairytale book, and hugs it close, the window glaring down at her as she breaks the silence. It was her grandmother's, once upon a time, and she wrote it when she was young and whole and so much more than just a damsel.

Hermione's mother grew up with the tale, and Hermione after her, but she is the end of the cycle.

She is where all the traditions stop.

Because they don't live - Hermione survives and Harry _dies - _and they're most definitely not happy. And the fairytale wasn't theirs to begin with.

After all, Harry was not her husband - not even her boyfriend. She does not deserve to mourn, they say; she is the best friend's girlfriend, the girlfriend's best friend. Nothing more, they say. Nothing less, though.

Strangely, it has always been Ron-and-Hermione, but now, Ron just looks serious and pale, and not angry. Hermione is honestly surprised, because there's something wrong with just... Ron-and. She can see the link; it is tangible, hovering in the air. An extra piece that can't replace the broken heart.

She can also see the cracks in her own heart from where she tore herself away to fit with Harry's shattered half.

Ginny doesn't understand why she's so upset - Ginny was left behind, too, and surely Harry meant more to her? - but she kind of gets it, in a way, because she recognises the dead look in Hermione's eyes. She recognises the pain and the love and the anguish, and that's enough, so she doesn't ask.

Ron leaves her alone, for the most part, and hugs her when she needs it, but somehow, Hermione thinks he knows better than anyone.

The princess waits in her lonely tower for a prince who won't ever come; sometimes she looks up at the stars and she thinks of freedom, while he always looks down from the stars and thinks of _her,_ just her.

The dragon is defeated. But the princess hasn't been saved.

The fourth step creaks beneath her as Hermione holds her head in her hands and cries.


End file.
